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PI: B. Andrawes/Student: K.E. Kim Bridges with various timber structural components make up a large portion of the transportation infrastructure in the US. Bridges supported on timber pile substructure, simply referred to as timber pile bridges, are particularly common. Many timber pile bridges still in service today were constructed in the 1950’s and 60’s using […]

PI: B. Andrawes/Student: A. Zafar For many years, steel has been used as the primary reinforcing material for concrete structures. Despite requisite stiffness, strength, ductility and desired deflection properties, steel reinforcing bars have tendency to incur permanent plastic deformations under excessive loading. Recently, fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcing bars have also been used in concrete […]

PI: B. Andrawes/Student: A. Pozolo Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is a workable yet stable concrete which flows easily and consolidates under its own weight. Its unique properties can substantially reduce the labor required to pour complex or heavily reinforced structural members. Over the past decade, the American precast industry has taken significant strides to adopt SCC […]

PI: B. Andrawes/Student: H. Zhao Concrete bridges play an important role in the transportation network. However, there are more than 56,000 bridges that have been identified as structurally deficient in the U.S., especially those bridges located in the Northern part of the U.S. where harsh climate inflicts severe damage to the structural integrity and durability […]

PI: B. Andrawes/Students: M. Shin and Q. Chen This research focuses on examining the use of shape memory alloy (SMA) spirals in the seismic retrofitting and repair of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns. The thermally triggered recovery stress of pre-strained SMA spirals is utilized to apply large active confinement pressure at the column’s plastic hinge […]

PI: J. Roesler / Student: A. Bordelon A series of bending tests were performed on concrete beams in 2007 by grad student Amanda Bordelon under the supervision of Prof. Jeffrey Roesler. Beams were tested in 3-point and 4-point bending configurations. Well defined post-peak behavior was achieved.

A set of experiments were carried out with the objective to determine the behavior of concrete columns under seismic loads. A Load-Boundary Condition Box (LBCB) mounted to the reaction wall was used to apply both bending moment and normal force to the column. This set of experiments were sponsored by the Network of Earthquake Engineering […]

This testing program was sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) in June 2008. There was an issue of ultimate strength of the lifting loops, which are built in to the concrete girders used on bridges and overpasses. The loops are made up of 7-wire strands, with a diameter of 0.5 in. Prof. D. […]

A series of tests were conducted on High-Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious composites using the Bi-Axial 100 kip testing frame. This project was sponsored by NEES under supervision from Prof. James LaFave; graduate student Raymond Foltz was the leading person in instrumentation, testing procedure, and data analysis. Specimens were subjected to bi-axial state of stress, and […]

A series of tests of concrete columns retrofitted with Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) and Glass Fibers (GF) were tested in NSEL using a custom-built testing setup. This project was sponsored by Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) under supervision of Prof. Bassem ANDRAWES from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Graduate students Nicholas Wierschem and Moochul […]